Mali – back to the colony

Within the military operations in Mali launched in the end of 2012, French authorities gain a chance to return its own former colony. The ongoing battles in the Middle East, are the most important arguments to the fact how the EU countries are sensitive on Energy issues. The principal difference of these operations from previous wars and conflicts of EU, is non- involvement of the USA in it. It seems, the allmighty USA could not ensure worldwide safety anymore or it is not interested in military conflicts in Africa. With such kind of conditions France has determined to intervene in Mali.

Today, millions of Europeans depend on import of natural gas and uranium from Algeria and Nigeria. Unexpected exhaustion of all these resources will ruin the whole economic system of European Union and make a way for deeply chaos in the continent. That is why, some experts estimated the intervention in Mali, as an “economic battle”. As a consequence of war France will gain a great chance to acquire energy sources, to halt the main problem of “Islamism movement” in Africa after former Libyan dictator Kaddafi was ousted. After the civil war in Libya , raisings in Syria and Egypt badly affected on deepening the radical Islamism movement in Mali.

Some terrorist groups in the middle of 2012, seized petroleum arsenals near the border of Algeria and began to threaten the energy interests of Eureopean investors.

Uranium and oil deposits in Nigeria and Mali which are exploited by French “Areva” consortium and certain Chinese firms are very important for such a kind of countries. Besides uranium, another factor which made Mali strained target for the West, is rich gold deposits in the south of the country, the former French colony Mali (with 13,8 million population) could become the leading “gold exporter” in Africa and has signed co-operation contracts with global foreign firms, such “Randgold resources”, “Landgold” and “Robex resources”.

In addition, Mali signed contarct in 2000 with energy giant “Total” and started exploiting oil deposits on the border of Algeria. Despite all this richness, Mali is still one of the poorest countries in the world.

Since 2012, some clashes inside the country began to panic the Algerian government, which desires to gain “super state” of the Northen Africa and the US authorities wish the conflict to be suspended by Algerian armed forces. It was known beforehand that, the operation launched by Algerian Special Forces in Mali would fail. In the first day, French soldiers were captivated by Ansar-ad-Din militants. President Francois Hollande gave an order about new military operations. In retaliation, terrorists attacked foreigners in Algeria and captured them all.

The main purpose of French intervention in Mali, is to prove its “military power” to all countries and the USA. Moreover, a direct intervention of France in Mali without participation of NATO members gave an advantage to it, in terms of EU does not intend to sacrifice Africa to the USA.